Speaker

Professor (Prince) Benjamin Adisa Ogunfolakan

Professor (Prince) Benjamin Adisa Ogunfolakan was born over six decade ago to the great hunting family of Lujumo Compound, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Attended Moscow State University, Moscow USSR (now Russia Federation) in 1981 where he bagged his Master of Art in History with bias in Archaeology. He later went to University of Ibadan, Ibadan Nigeria for his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology.

Since 1988, he has been working on the Historical Archeology of Yoruba land with special focus on the famous Potsherd Pavement locally known as Apaadi Luwo that is prevalent in Ile-Ife. Interestingly, the pavement has been identified in more than thirty Yoruba towns and villages including both Benin and Togo Republics. Since 2015, he has been engaged in the Ife-Sungbo archaeological project conceived and projected by Gerard Chouin as a co-director. He has engaged in the use of GIS and Geophysical survey of archaeological sites in Ile-Ife and Ogbomoso, Nigeria

Apart from this pavement, he has also been working on other aspect of Yoruba technology, identifying iron-smelting sites in Ife region. In addition, he has been working on the tourism potential of Osun State with the identification of numerous cultural and natural tourist centres most especially in the Northeast area of Osun State Nigeria.

He is the current director of AG Leventis Museum of Natural History, Obafemi Awolowo University, the position he has been holding since 2011.

He has attended numerous conferences and seminars both nationally and internationally. In the fall of 2005, he was awarded the Sheila Bildle Ford Foundation   Fellowship of the prestigious Harvard University USA and Copeland Fellowship of the Amherst College, Amherst, USA in the spring of 2006. He is a non-residence fellow of Harvard University USA. In the 2015 he was offered a month fellowship with the Africana Department of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA through one of his former students, Professor Akin Ogundiran.